March 26: My hero

A few years ago, I volunteered my time at a Christian day camp for children. The kids were treated to Bible stories, sports, snacks, crafts, music and magic tricks (I did the latter.) There was always a spirited singing session and one of the kids' favourite songs was JESUS, YOU'RE MY SUPERHERO!

I suppose that's letting kids worship in their own language. We have a lot of superheroes in our culture - Batman, Superman and Spiderman are the three most popular at the moment. One day they will make a Wonder Woman movie and she will take over too.

Well, sure. The Bible tells us that Jesus is the captain of our salvation. I guess that's pretty superhero-ific. Jesus didn't have X-ray vision or heat vision; His super power was that he could preach the beautiful sermon on the mount.

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I have plenty of heroes.

Jesus is my hero. Augustine is my hero. My dad is my hero.

And there are people I admire too. David Mamet, Jarome Iginla, David Copperfield, Al Pacino. Are they heroes? They are and they are not.

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Actually, I am surrounded by heroes. You are too.

If you get up every morning and go to a job so you can support your family, you're a hero. You go to work and in exchange for your time, you are given a paycheque. You use that cheque to pay your rent, your bills, your groceries. The balance you will use to put gas in your car and clothes on your kids' backs. You can treat yourself to something if there's anything left, but there probably won't be. Such is the nature of the beast.

My dad gave up a dream of being a professional sportscaster and took a job selling photocopiers. He hated it, but he did it to feed his family. That's pretty heroic if you ask me.

If you have a mom and/or dad who went to work and still found time to love you, then you know a hero too.

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